### REMARK ###
The procedure of creating this dataset is as follows:
1. I first identified the political parties that participated in the LegCo election and District Council election in the 2016-21 election cycle.
2. To identify the date of establishment and date of establishment of the parties, I used three main sources of information: (i) wikipedia, (ii) wisenews (local news search engine) and (iii) facebook page of the parties
3. As written in the paper, to be qualified as a party, the entity must : (1) file at least two candidates in either the 2016 LegCo Geographical Constituency (GC) election or in the 2019 District Council (DC)  election; and (2) win at least a seat in either of these two direct elections. Whereas for the entity that participated in the 2016 LegCo the Functional Constituency (FC), whose electorate is sector organizations or individuals working in a particular profession, the entity had to win at least a seat.
4. Users should note that there are uncertainties regarding the date of establishment / disbandment. E.g. when the source of information is wisenews, the value of the date of establishment is the time when the party name first appeared in news search engine. As such, there should be a time lag since news report may not report the actual date of establishment. The source of information is indicated in the column "note". 

*** Users should note that the dataset does not take into consideration the renouncement of party membership and those parties that went dormant since the NSL trial
 

### VARIABLE NAME AND MEANING ###
party_name_eng - party name in english
party_name_chi - party name in chinses
date_establishment - date of establishment
date_disbandment -  date of disbandment
gc_seat - a dummy that indicates if the party has at least two seats in geographical constituency in the 2016–21 election cycle
fc_seat - a dummy that indicates if the party has at least a seat in functional constituency in the 2016–21 election cycle
dc_seat - a dummy that indicates if the party has at least two seats in district council in the 2016–21 election cycle
note - it denotes the source of information: (1) wikipedia (2) wisenews (3) facebook page; other related remarks are also written